The Morning After: Facebook exploited, useless Japanese gadgets

The League of Legends North American regional tournament concluded this week with Team Solo Mid, Team Dignitas, and Counter Logic Gaming securing spots in October's World Championship games. Riot Games also revealed its new livestream portal this week; it supports popular livestreamers with news coverage and even prizes to give away to viewers. Wrath of Heroes released its new ranged Dwarven Engineer hero Durrig, and we heard that upcoming Korean free-for-all MOBACore Masters Online may be getting an English-language release.

As game developers around the world recover from PAX 2012, videos are starting to surface showing highlights from the event. Firefall developer Red 5 Studios laid the whole PAX experience bare in a three-part video series covering the tense week of preparation for the event and its final execution. Torchlight II developer Runic Games posted its own PAX wrap-up video and its official release trailer this week, pre-empting the game's launch in just under two weeks time.

Upcoming free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile released its 10th video in the popular Build of the Week series. Diablo III celebrates its first player to reach paragon level 100, and developers published a new journal entry on upcoming changes to the game's crowd control mechanics.

This week saw the conclusion of the League of Legends North American regional tournament, with Team Solo Mid, Team Dignitas and Counter Logic Gaming all securing spots at the World Championship. The teams will face off against each other in a later tournament for $40,000 in prize money and the North American Championship title, but everyone's eyes are on the upcoming $2,000,000 World Championship. The North American winners will clash with teams from Europe, China, Southeast Asia, and Korea in October's showdown that's sure to be as much a matter of national pride as gaming pride.

If you're one of the millions worldwide who tune in to livestreams every day, check out Riot Games' new livestreaming portal. Riot periodically features prominent livestreamers in its news, but with the number of streamers exploding in recent months, the team has set up a whole portal to support them. You can sign up to be featured in the portal, and if your stream is popular enough, Riot will even donate prizes to give away to people tuning in.

If you missed last week's announcement at PAX 2012, you'll be glad to know that Torchlight II was given a release date of September 20th. With less than two weeks to go until the popular action RPG is released, Runic Games posted the game's official launch trailer showing clips of the game in action. The trailer also shows off the game's four new classes: the insane melee Berserker, the explosive Engineer, the fierce Embermage, and the gun-slinging Outlander.

This week's Path of Exile Build of the Week video shows off a level 72 Witch build nicknamed Elemental Fury. This build shows the kind of damage you can achieve when you stack every available source of critical strike chance and damage and use four support gems to add effects like multiple projectiles to attacks. Each cast uses about a third of the player's mana, but he's solved that problem with a unique combination of auras and support gems.

In a new Diablo III Developer Journal this week, Blizzard's Wyatt Chengdiscusses upcoming changes to crowd control in Inferno difficulty. While the article looks as if it's describing a nerf to crowd-crontrol abilities, it's actually quite a big buff for leveling characters and some Inferno builds. Currently, most crowd control abilities like Frost Nova and a Monk's stunning attacks have their durations of effect reduced by 65% in Hell and Inferno difficulty. After the next major patch, that reduction will be replaced with a new system of diminishing returns.

When a monster is first hit by a crowd control ability, it will persist for its full duration, lasting 65% longer than it does currently. Each successful cast increases the monster's resistance to crowd control, up to a maximum of 65%. Players using kiting builds or high-damage builds that focus on casting the occasional stun or freeze will get a huge boost with the patch.

The paragon system has been out for just a few weeks, but already a player has hit the paragon level cap of 100. Barbarian player Alkaizer streamed his race to the top to gather support and finally secured the world first paragon level 100 character this week. To help shorten the length of the paragon XP grind, Blizzard is considering adding experience shrines to Inferno difficulty.

The Firefall team made a big showing at PAX 2012 last week and recorded the action for those who couldn't attend. In a three part video series, developers show the whole PAX experience, from pre-trip preparation to setting up the booth and finally meeting the hordes of excited fans who turned up to try the game. If you've ever wondered how much hard work goes into making a showing at events like PAX, this video series is an eye-opener.

Wrath of Heroes released its new Dwarven Engineer Durrig this week. The new ranged hero uses a gun as his main weapon but deals area-effect damage from grenades and artillery strikes. Durrig can also throw down a turret that lobs bombs at any target he fires on, and he has an automatic damage bonus against greenskins.

This week we heard that upcoming Korean MOBACore Masters Online may be getting an English-language western release. Although the game is visually much like League of Legends but with typical Korean characters, some of its features set it apart from the genre giant. The game boasts a more casual free-for-all mode and shorter 15-minute 4v4 matches in place of the typical MOBA five-a-side.

Join us every Monday for Not So Massively, our roundup of the top news from popular online games that aren't quite MMOs. If you think there's a game we should be covering in Not So Massively or you've found some interesting news you think deserves attention in the next roundup, please mail the details to brendan@massively.com.